WHITE SANDS MISSILE RANGE - There's something about standing on White Sands Missile Range on a chilly New Mexico morning, watching the power of the sun melt a rock, boring a 2-inch wide by 1-inch deep crater in about one minute, that makes one think of a science fiction scenario.

But that was the reality Friday through a public-private partnership that saw the company TransAstra successfully test technology that, hopefully, will speed human exploration of space by allowing spaceships to drill into passing asteroids to extract both water and fuel.

This would open new horizons in opening our solar system, asteroid belt and eventually deep space by eliminating the need to lift heavy amounts of fluid and fuel out of earth's gravitational field, said Joel Sercel, founder and chief technical officer of TransAstra, who likens to standing between the two towering mirrors that comprise the test facility to the desert, twin-sunned Tatooine of Star Wars fame.

By harnessing the power of the sun in space, large quantities of water could be mined from asteroids and used to fuel spacecraft, thereby reducing the cost of spaceflight as well as increasing distance that can be reasonably flown. In addition to potential economic benefits, Sercel said it is the next necessary step in expanding spatial exploration.

"We are a new company designed to get humans off the planet through asteroid mining," he said.

The challenge is reproducing the results of the testing at WSMR in space. To that end, the researchers have developed a way to test the solar mining technology in equipment that simulates one-1,000,000 of the earth's atmospheric pressure. Next, a project will be designed to send the technology to the International Space Station for further testing, he said.

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White Sands Missile Range electronics engineer Jose Enriquez stands in front a heliostat, a 40-foot wide, 36-foot high perpendicular plane of 180 two-foot by two-foot-square mirrors which will help focus sunlight onto a sample of the mineral williamsite serpentine as part of a space asteroid mining test at WSMR on Friday.(Photo: Jett Loe / Sun-News)

How it works

The testing facility at WSMR is the third largest solar furnace in the United States. Sandia Laboratories holds first place followed by Georgia Tech. The three trail the world's largest in France.

The 45-foot tall by 100-foot long facility can focus up to 5,000 degrees Fahrenheit by using a combination of two sets of mirrors. First is the heliostat, a 40-foot wide, 36-foot high perpendicular plane of 36 white, two-foot square, quarter-inch thick mirrors which slants and rotates to track and reflect the suns rays.

The reflected rays pass over and around a box-shaped test chamber and on to a concentrator attenuator, a network of louvres which can be opened, closed or slanted for a Venetian blind effect to control the amount of energy passing from the heliostat to the concentrator. The concentrator is a 30-foot square concave arrangement of 180 spherical mirrors to focus the energy into the test chamber. The test chamber is a 16-foot long enclosed facility which houses controls for all components and where test objects are exposed to the sun's rays.

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Researchers used concentrated sunlight by a large solar furnace to melt the mineral williamsite serpentine as part of an asteroid mining test Friday at White Sands Missile Range.(Photo: Jett Loe / Sun-News)

Where it came from

The solar furnace was moved to WSMR, from Natick, Massachusetts, in the late 1960s at a cost of about $230,000 for transportation and reconstruction.

It was initially used to test the effects of thermal radiation on equipment such as electronic circuits, transistors and other missile components, said Stacey Hooley, an electrical engineer with WSMR. Essentially testing the effects of a nuclear blast on the materials and components.

"In the test cell (the sunlight beam) will heat over 4,500 degrees," Hooley said. "It's on the order of 20 toasters."

The TransAstra test aims to utilize that technology, although only at the 500-degree to 1,000-degree range, to prove that rocky asteroids can be mined. While the huge array at WSMR would be difficult to replicate in space because of the required support infrastructure, Sercel said new technology means a thin reflective layer could be deployed in zero-gravity and could be launched in a package roughly the size of a carry-on bag.

Where it's going

Getting the mechanism built and to space will take time, Sercel said. But in the interim, Friday's test proved that the technology can drill through terrestrial rock as well as simulated asteroid material.

The group used the best available data to create the simulated asteroid material, whipping up test batches in KFC buckets. The press to move the ongoing project forward came when NASA, a partner in the research, announced their ARM, or Asteroid Redirection Mission that aims to capture and direct an asteroid into orbit around Earth's moon for testing.

"Of course we would like to test on actual asteroid," Sercel said, standing in the shadow of the hulking test facility. "But they are very expensive. We think the key is public/private partnerships. Private (industry) can move quicker and government has the resources like this one here."

Jason Gibbs may be reached at 575-541-5451 or jgibbs@lcsun-news.com. Follow him on Twitter @fjgwriter

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Empty KFC buckets are used as containers to make simulated asteroids at the solar furnace asteroid mining tests at White Sands Missile Range. A simulated asteroid, a grey half-cylinder, can be seen behind the KFC bucket on the left.(Photo: Jett Loe / Sun-News)